Ulrika Estere may be a photographer but she does more than point and shoot. The 23-year-old Swede crafts marvelous dreamscapes that transcend any notion of time or space. In her series Girl With 7 Horses, Estere crafts a poignant tale of a maiden whose seven invisible horses are spirited away by forceful winds one fall afternoon. Tangled up in her laundry, the horses take on the appearance of strewn clothing, offering only the barest of hints at their true identities. The result, captured on film, is at once ephemeral and enduring, fleeting yet fixed. Like all the best stories, it begins with four immortal words: "once upon a time."

FAIRY TALE

Estere began the project as a way to incorporate animals into her imagery despite her lack of access. “I shot the first horse photo in early autumn last year and on my way home the story about the girl and her seven horses just came to me,” she told Portable on Thursday. “People have really fallen in love with the series and have been so kind expressing this to me.”

Estere began the project as a way to incorporate animals into her imagery despite her lack of access.

Estere’s yarn, in full:

“Once upon a time there was a girl who had seven invisible horses. People thought she was crazy and that she, in fact, had seven imaginary horses, but this was not the case. When autumn came, the girl spent a whole day washing all her clothes. She hung them on a string in her garden to let the gentle autumn sun dry them. Out of nowhere, a terrible storm came and its forceful winds grabbed a hold of all her clothes and all seven horses (since they are invisible they obviously didn’t weigh much). The girl was devastated and spent all autumn looking for each horse spread around the country, wrapped in her clothes.”